WHAT EVERY AMERICAN
SHOULD KNOW

A project of the Aspen Institute Citizenship & American Identity Program

In 1987, E.D. Hirsch sparked a national debate with his book Cultural Literacy, claiming that there is a foundation of common knowledge every American should know — and codifying it in a list of 5,000 facts and cultural references. Hirsch’s list was attacked, celebrated, and much discussed. Today, amidst giant demographic and social shifts, the United States needs such common knowledge more than ever. But a 21st century sense of cultural literacy has to be radically more diverse and inclusive. And it needs to come not from one person but from all of us. So, we ask: What do you think Americans should know to be civically and culturally literate? Give us your top ten!

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What ten items - it could be a person, a place, an idea, etc. - should every 21st-century American know?

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THE CROWD’S TOP ITEMS

1. U.S. Constitution

2. Slavery

3. Declaration of Independence

4. Martin Luther King Jr.

5. September 11th

6. US Civil War

7. World War I

8. Suffragette

9. Trail of Tears

10. White privilege

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SELECTED LISTS

Colin Woodard

Award-Winning Author and Journalist

Story of Squanto

John Locke on the Poor

Whiskey Rebellion

Cherokee Nation-State

James Henry Hammond

Gilded Age Trusts

Social Darwinism

Woodrow Wilson

Dwight Eisenhower Farewell Address

My Lai Massacre

Anne-Marie Slaughter

President and CEO, New America Foundation

Jazz

Gilded Age

Trail of Tears

Sojourner Truth

The Dust Bowl

Declaration of Independence

Gettysburg Address

Declaration of Sentiments at Seneca Falls

Korematsu dissent

I Have a Dream Speech

David Henry Hwang

American playwright, librettist, screenwriter, and theater professor

The Blues

Japanese American Internment

The Six Nations

Forty acres and a mule

Stonewall Riots

Sally Hemings

Loving v. Virginia

Death of a Salesman

The Know-Nothing Party

The Chinese Exclusion Act

Maria Hinojosa

Award-Winning Journalist

History of Latinos in the US

Mexican map in the early 1800s

US Colonies

Chicano Movement

Young Lords

United Farm Workers

Japanese American Internment

Myth of objectivity

Sonia Sotomayor

Hope

Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

American Historian, Literary Critic, Filmmaker, and Public Intellectual

"What Every American Should Know” (WE-ASK) is a project of the Aspen Institute Citizenship & American Identity Program, and grew out of an essay by executive director Eric Liu. The Program was created in 2014 to explore how, in an age of increasing diversity and widening inequality, this country can cultivate a sense of shared destiny and common civic purpose. Learn more
here.